Luca Bertolani Azeredo, PhD

Historian of political violence — Storico della violenza politica

PhD in Global History and Governance (2026, Scuola Superiore Meridionale, Naples). I work on modern and contemporary Ireland, across political, social and cultural history. My current research studies Italians in Ireland from the nineteenth century to the present.

Dottore di ricerca in Global History and Governance (2026, Scuola Superiore Meridionale, Napoli). Mi occupo di Irlanda in età moderna e contemporanea, con ricerche di taglio politico, sociale e culturale. La mia ultima ricerca studia gli italiani in Irlanda dal XIX secolo a oggi.

Ireland and Political Violence

How political violence emerged, organised itself and acquired legitimacy in the Ireland that preceded the revolution, and what made an armed citizen acceptable in the eyes of the state.

Political violence and paramilitarism in Ireland, 1909–1916

This research investigates Irish paramilitary bodies in the decade before the Great War: how they armed, drilled and built their own legitimacy in a space where — in the phrase that gives the thesis its title — “there are illegalities that are not crimes”. It cuts across nationalism and unionism, looking at youth organisations, the discipline of the body, the press, and the ways the British state chose not to intervene.

«There are illegalities that are not crimes». An investigation into political violence and paramilitary bodies in Ireland before the Great War

The dissertation examines the origins of political violence and armed voluntarism in early twentieth-century Ireland and Great Britain, with particular focus on the early years of the Third Home Rule Bill Crisis (1912–1916), and argues that this period marked the decisive transition through which Irish and British politics became militarised. An opening chapter situates Irish political violence in a longue durée perspective, showing how state institutions, policing and the military shaped Irish society’s relationship to force. The two central chapters reconstruct four underexplored voluntary and paramilitary organisations that predated the Ulster Volunteer Force and the Irish Volunteers — Na Fianna Éireann, the Young Citizen Volunteers of Ireland, the Enniskillen Horse and the Irish Citizen Army — and show how they pioneered models of armed associationism and civic militarisation that would shape later mass movements. A final chapter widens the frame to contemporary Europe, identifying the militarisation of politics, the negotiation between legality and illegality and the appeal of armed voluntarism as shared continental traits, while recognising Ireland’s distinctive trajectory.

Before the Revolution: Armed Citizenship and Civil Militarism in Modern Ireland

Scholarship on the decade before 1916 has concentrated almost entirely on explicitly political, insurgent or illegal armed organisations, reading violence through the lenses of revolution, sectarian conflict and state repression. This project shifts attention to the cultural, legal and social substratum that made armed practices intelligible, legitimate and socially embedded before they became associated with insurgency: the civilian rifle clubs, shooting associations, cadet formations and voluntary training organisations active in Ireland between 1900 and 1925 — neither clandestine militias nor purely recreational bodies, but organisations embedded in schools, sporting cultures, patriotic associations and projects of physical and moral improvement. The distinction between legitimate and illegitimate armed organisation was rarely fixed in advance: it was politically negotiated, legally contested and administratively redefined in response to shifting anxieties about loyalty, citizenship, public order and national security. The project combines archival research, legislative history, social and cultural history, prosopography and digital methods, and sets the Irish case alongside the civil-militarism movements studied for Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland and Italy.

Italians in Ireland

A history of Italian migration to Ireland built from the ground up, from the nineteenth century to the present.

Italians in Ireland, from the nineteenth century to the present

Censuses, parish registers, civil records and court reporting reconstruct the names, trades and itineraries of the Italian families who migrated to Ireland: the ice-cream parlours and chip shops, the kinship networks linking Casalattico to Dublin, the lives that crossed the border of a divided land. The archival work has so far produced an article on the Italian community in early twentieth-century Ireland, three conference papers in Maynooth, Strasbourg and Cambridge, and a public prosopographical archive of almost two thousand biographical records with a navigable map of settlement.

Publications (12)

Conference papers (25)

2026-06 — “Un poco di gelato, if I may”. A New History of Italian Immigration to Ireland (1880s-1926). Association for the Study of Modern Italy, Postgraduate Summer School 2026, Department of Criminology, Cambridge
2026-04 — The Pedagogy of Violence: Youth, Discipline, and Paramilitary Culture in Early 20th Century Ireland. Comparative Irish Studies from Ancient Times to the Present, Jagiellonian University, Cracovia
2026-03 — Migrants in a Divided Land: Italian Communities and the Making of Modern Ireland. Colloque SOFEIR “Irish Exceptionalism”, Université de Strasbourg
2025-11 — “I Fought the Law, and I Won”. The United Kingdom and the Crisis of Paramilitarism, 1900-1916. Engaged Citizens. Seminar PRIN 2022, Università di Napoli Federico II
2025-11 — The Enniskillen Horse: Illegality, Legitimacy and the Birth of Irish Paramilitarism. Irish Studies Seminars, Autumn 2025, Queen’s University Belfast
2025-09 — “Rebels under the Union Jack”. Reassessing Loyalist Radicalisation in the Home Rule Crisis. 7th EFACIS International Postgraduate Conference, Charles University, Praga
2025-09 — La Dolce Vita? Story of an Italian Ice-Cream Parlour in Enniskillen. 35th Irish Conference of Historians, Maynooth University
2025-06 — «There are illegalities that are not crimes». An Investigation into Political Violence and Paramilitary Bodies in Ireland before the Great War. PhD Workshop 2024-25, discussant Brian Hughes, Scuola Superiore Meridionale, Napoli
2025-05 — Framing Military Resistance: The Press and the Irish Home Rule Crisis. EFACIS Conference 2025, Åbo / Turku
2024-12 — Shaping the Youth of Conflict: Religious Divides and the Foundations of Irish Paramilitary Organizations. Religion, Division and Development in Ireland. 3rd CEPH Irish Research Initiative Workshop, Online
2024-12 — Cittadini virili, armati, e patriottici? Il caso degli Young Citizen Volunteers, Belfast 1912-16. Percezioni e pratiche di (in)sicurezza in Italia. PRIN 2022, Università di Roma Tor Vergata
2024-06 — “No Man shall ride armed within the Realm”: The Enniskillen Horse and the Irish Home Rule Crisis. ACIS MIC 2024 Conference, Mary Immaculate College, Limerick
2024-06 — “It may be tomfoolery – but is it legal?” The Enniskillen Horse and the Irish Home Rule Crisis (1912-14). Galway Conference of Irish Studies 2024: Slow Violence X Irish Studies, University of Galway
2024-04 — “There are things stronger than Parliamentary majorities”: For a Political Use of Violence in Ireland, 1909-1916. Radicalism, Radicalisation, and Deradicalisation in Ireland, Université de Lorraine, Nancy
2024-04 — «There are illegalities that are not crimes». An Investigation into Political Violence and Paramilitary Bodies in Ireland before the Great War. Doctoral Workshop, discussants Richard English e Daniel Joseph Macarthur-Seal, Scuola Superiore Meridionale, Napoli
2023-09 — The Children of the Empire. Youth Organisations in British Ireland between Imperialism and Anti-Colonialism, 1909-1916. 6th EFACIS International Postgraduate Conference, Charles University, Praga
2023-09 — Italian Labour & Unions in the ’70s – a Decade of Troubles. Irish Labour History Society 2nd International Conference, Liberty Hall, Dublino
2023-08 — Na Fianna Éireann and the Young Citizen Volunteers. EFACIS Conference 2023, Queen’s University Belfast
2023-05 — The Balloon and the Bullet. Children and Young People in Irish Early Paramilitarism. 21st International AEDEI Conference, Universitat de València
2023-05 — Manly Physique, Attractive Uniforms, and Drill Manoeuvres: Kids and Boys Playing with War in Pre-War Ireland. Gender and Sexuality History Workshop, Easter 2023, University of Cambridge
2023-03 — “There are illegalities that are not crimes”. An Investigation into Political Violence and Paramilitary Bodies in Ireland before the Great War. Global History and Governance – Research Workshop 2022-2023, Scuola Superiore Meridionale, Napoli
2023-03 — Manly Physique, Attractive Uniforms, and Drill Manoeuvres. Two Case Studies in Pre-War Ireland. Irish History Students’ Association 74th Annual Conference, Carlow College
2022-10 — The Handbook of the Young Terrorist. Na Fianna Éireann and Irish Paramilitarism. Economic and Social History Society of Ireland Conference, Maynooth University
2022-05 — Il manuale del giovane terrorista. Na Fianna Éireann e il paramilitarismo irlandese. Student Conference 2022 — Con quale autorità?, Università degli Studi di Pavia
2018-11 — 1918 – L’influenza Spagnola. Riflessione e discussione a 100 anni dalla più grande epidemia della storia. Simposio Permanente della Storia, Università degli Studi di Padova

Projects

Italians in Ireland — A census of the Italian families who migrated to Ireland between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: biographical records, census sources and a navigable map of settlement.

Education

2021–2026 — PhD in Global History and Governance (Doctor Europaeus), Scuola Superiore Meridionale, Napoli
2024 — Visiting Research Fellow, Trinity College Dublin
2023 — Visiting Student, University College Cork
2022–2023 — Visiting Student, Queen’s University Belfast
2017–2020 — MA in Historical Science, Università degli Studi di Padova
2021 — Teaching qualification credits (24 CFU), Università degli Studi di Padova
2019 — Erasmus+, University College Dublin
2013–2017 — BA in History, Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna

Contact

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